Cambridge Mafia

Over at the Guardian, Nick Watt has pulled together a terrific summary of the lifelong rivalry between Ken Clarke and Michael Howard. It began 50 years ago with a row over Oswald Mosley and it’s still going strong today over prisons policy.

Clarke and Howard are, of course, members of the so-called Cambridge Mafia that graduated from 1960s student politicking to rule the roost in Whitehall as cabinet ministers.

It is a famous tale. But there is a coalition twist to the Cambridge Mafia story that is less well known.

One of the Cambridge Union presidents around this time was a young liberal activist from York called Vince Cable.

Now that the coalition is formed, Cable has surely earned his place as a “made man”. He really deserves to join the list of Cambridge Mafioso, which includes Clarke, Howard, Norman Lamont, Norman Fowler, John Gummer and Leon Brittan. (Some of them are pictured here at Clarke’s wedding.)

The authors

Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kate Allen is a political correspondent for the FT. She joined the lobby team in October 2015, after two years as the FT's property correspondent. She previously spent a decade covering housing on various business magazines.